The Washington-based Pew Center on the States is handing out kudos to North Carolina again, this time for the way its legislative analysts keep track of the “future budget implications,” – the coming financial bite, in other words – of economic development incentives that find their way into law.

North Carolina is one of 16 states being held up as an example for how it deals with incentives. Pew calls its study “Avoiding Blank Checks.”

The Tar Heel example cited by Pew happened back in 2010 when the General Assembly expanded the film industry tax credit. Fiscal researchers crunched the numbers and estimated that the cost of the expansion would grow “by more than $50 million a year within three years.”

Pew says, for its study, it looked at “hundreds” of state-level incentives considered between 2007 and 2011. How much time the other 34 states spend looking into the financial implications of the incentives they adopt or consider isn’t part of the study.

But rest assured, in North Carolina, pausing to take a look down the road is nearly always done.

The General Assembly’s Fiscal Research division has 40 staffers who, during any legislative session, churn out dozens and dozens of fiscal notes on any proposed legislation that promises to eat up state revenue, incentives included. The type of forward looking projection done in the case of the film credits is commonplace, in fact.

About the only thing you could wish they’d do more of would be to come up with better impact estimates when lawmakers pass “stimulus” credits, like the one that allows pass through companies to write off their first $50,000 in business income. What’s happening with that one remains a source of uncertainty and controversy.

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